Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Leadership, 2006. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-154).

The problem of this study is to identify and describe specific bureaucratic/organizational barriers that inhibit needed curricular and instructional flexibility and freedom in an urban school system and to determine if means exist by which the barriers can be overcome. The purposes of this study include the identification, description, and assessment of the barriers identified and the development of a process model which addresses identified barriers. The study includes samples of parents, teachers, principals, and central administrators. Questionnaires were administered to parents and teachers. Structured interviews were conducted with all administrators. The survey instruments were validated through means of pilot tests and jury panels.

The purposes of this study were to describe the characteristics of the changing male voice in 4th, 5th and 6th grade students using Cooksey's maturation stages and, to compare the age-of-onset of the male voice change in African American, White, and Hispanic male students. Participants included volunteer 4th (n = 61), 5th (n = 73), and 6th grade male students (n = 63) from 2 urban elementary schools, 5 suburban elementary schools, 1 suburban middle school and 1 urban middle school in the North Texas region. The three ethnic groups represented in this study were: African American (n = 62), White (n = 58), and Hispanic (n = 77). Results indicated that approximately 46% of 4th grade participants, 62% of 5th grade participants, and 67% of 6th grade participants were classified as changing voices. A descriptively larger percentage of African American participants were classified as changing voices than Hispanic and White participants. Also, a larger percentage of African American and Hispanic participants were descriptively classified in the more advanced stages of the voice change than White participants. Urban African American, White, and Hispanic participants had a larger percentage of males classified as changing voices than suburban African American, White, and Hispanic participants. Results of a one-way, between subjects ANOVA revealed no significant main effect for ethnicity, F (2, 51) = .42, p = .66, η2 = .02. The overall mean age-of-onset for participants in this study was approximately 11.20 years of age.

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In August of 2007, Los Angeles Unified School District embarked on a new journey under the leadership of Superintendent David Brewer toward improving the achievement of some of Los Angeles’ lowest performing schools. By establishing a partnership with the Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, the goal of the improvements was to form a team of talented and experienced educators who would identify schools whose majority of teachers would be willing to be led and supported by these experienced educators under an umbrella organization called the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools in agreement with United Teachers of Los Angeles. The Deputy Mayor, Ramon Cortines, recruited me, the researcher of this study, to serve as Superintendent of Instruction of the Partnership in February of 2008. For two and a half years, I, along with 28 team members worked tenaciously to develop and implement a model that would accelerate achievement. While there were numerous initiatives and programs attempting to improve student performance in the lowest performing schools, no initiative in the district alleviated teachers from the day-to- day constraints of district policies and procedures. The reform model developed by the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools was the focus of this research. An analysis of the implementation of the Partnership Model at one particular site, Excellence Elementary School, yielded results that examined if the Partnership Model was able to successfully transform outcomes in an underperforming school.

Every student has the right to a safe learning environment, yet so many students have been targets of or witnesses of bullying incidents. In spite of school administration efforts to create effective reporting systems and to implement anti-bullying programs, many students remain silent victims. The present study analyzes data collected from a School Safety Survey through SchoolTipline. This data was used to determine the bullying trends, reporting trends, and reporting preferences of 562 7th and 8th grade students at an urban, suburban, and rural school. The results of this study indicate that bullying continues to be a prevalent issue that students face, but a great majority still fail to report these bullying incidents to school personnel. The results also indicate that there are significant differences in regard to bullying among the urban, suburban, and rural schools, which warrant further research.

Thesis advisor: Patrick McQuillan / Urban school districts' educational leaders face what seem to be an endless number of challenges, such as closing the achievement gap, enhancing student performance, building teacher capacity, creating leadership opportunities, and adapting to a student population that is changing rapidly and increasingly made up of students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds who are limited English speakers and/or English language learners. Through the lens of complexity theory, this three-year instrumental case study examined the leadership practices of two Lynch Leadership Academy Principal Fellows in relation to their leadership growth project that they determined would benefit from improvement and, as a result, would be implemented in their urban schools. Using principal and teachers’ interviews and observation fieldnotes of the professional learning communities meetings at the schools, this study chronicled the actions and behaviors of the principals and teachers through their interdependent and mutual relationships as they developed a theory of action and conducted their Leadership Growth Project, taking into account the concepts of complexity theory and the influence on the school community. The findings demonstrate that principals, through their leadership and relationships with their teachers and their engagement in professional learning community activities, complicated and disrupted the complacency, compliance, and comfort of the teachers. The formation of a theory of action, however, which was a way for the teachers and the principals to satisfy the needs of their urban school community in response to the challenges they faced, was sparked by such disruptions. Additionally, teachers had to reconsider how they interacted with their students as a result of their capacity for self-organization at the edge of chaos. A conclusion of this research is that in order to achieve successful professional learning outcomes and emergence through adapted change that incorporate the principal's leadership, teachers must be willing to communicate practice-related issues and to offer and accept constructive criticism in an environment of disequilibrium. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This research analyzes the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the Florida A+ Plan, in an attempt to understand how people personally responded to the changes that occurred in a school setting as a result of the mandates of standardized testing. The focus will be on the reactions of the administration and the changes the administrative body of a high school was forced to make, and focus will be placed on teachers in regards to teacher focus, instruction, and their view of student perceptions of the testing, before during and after the test is administered. The focus of this research is Roberts High School, an inner-city high school that went from a failing school, with an "F" status for five consecutive years to that of a school with a "D" status-missing the "C" status by a mere five points. This dramatic change happened after the state of Florida took control of the operations of the school, as dictated by state mandates, due to the failing performance of the previous five years. This research is conducted in an attempt to understand what caused the significant gains as cited by the results of the testing, how teachers and administrators responded to and implemented these changes, and to see if the controversial standardized testing that is taking over the nation's schools is meeting the aim of No Child Left Behind-to close the achievement gap.

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No description available.